O Holy Road
(1998)
Written for my 4th year Oral Narrative course... all very true stories
Arhus, Denmark
Outside the core of downtown Arhus lies the botanical gardens of Den Gamble By. This afternoon, I have come to celebrate the summer solstice inside the fence of June roses that line the park perimeter. In full zenith sun I am wandering though the rows of blossoms that lead me to a pond shrouded in swollen green vines. Four people sit by the water’s edge and they call me over to share a drink.Elisa is from East Greenland and she tells me I am beautiful. She leans over to kiss me and I smell that she is drunk. Three men sit with us at the wooden picnic table and their eyes move from the sky to me to their hands and back to me again. They are all drinking beer out of cans and when I ask, they claim that they have been there all day. Elisa gives me a flower and says that it’s for my hair. She touches my arm and then my leg, and reaches over to kiss me again.
“I am proud to be from Greenland,” she says. “Don’t let nobody ever tell you I’m not proud to be from Greenland.” The three men laugh, then one of them says something in Danish. Elisa scowls and looks back at me. “They are just fucking men,” she says. “Don’t ever listen to them,” and she laughs so hard she falls over backwards onto a patch of neatly sculpted grass.
The man with the red scarf speaks, and the other two continue laughing. He explains that the other men are embarrassed because their English is very bad. He is a big man with coarse black hair and a long thin scar above his left eyebrow. “Why are you here all alone?” he asks, and suggests that it isn’t safe. “You are too beautiful to be out in a world full of crazy people, and never knowing what they could do.”
Elisa is always smiling at me. She is drawing pictures with a pencil in my journal. “This is a bad city,” she says. “Be careful in this city. There are many people who could hurt a small pretty girl.” She holds up the page to show me her drawing. “This is me and my mother in Greenland,” she says. “It is our land and we are both proud, but still, we can never go back.” The man with the black leather jacket finishes his beer and throws the can over our heads into the pond. “You bastard,” says Elisa. “You must never hurt the birds. I told you, you never hurt the ones that fly.”The man in the red scarf looks at me, through their continuing argument and asks, “Do you like the birds?”
“Umm, yes,” I answer. He nods his head and looks away. “I thought you would,” he says. “Little ducks. They look like they’ve just been born.”
The four are leaving shortly and Elisa wants me to come. “No,” the man with the red scarf says. “It is better that she doesn’t come.” Elisa is holding onto my shirt.“I think I’ll just stay here in the gardens for a while,” I say. There is a wall of roses keeping me inside.
“No,” Elisa begs. “You must come with us now because we gotta party.”
The man in the black leather jacket speaks, “You do not want to know us,” he says. He is telling me a secret. Taking Elisa’s hand, he begins to walk away. “You must learn to be careful of people like us.”
Night Train to Trondheim, Norway.
On a journey to perpetual daylight I find myself en route to the Polarsirklen, Norway’s slice of the Arctic Circle. In my ears, there is nothing but the rhythmic rattling of wheels on tracks and the indiscernible mumblings of the language of the North.I am sitting on my pack in a crowded dining car on the night train from Oslo to Trondheim. I have lost my reservation ticket and the train is full so I’ll spend the night in the lounge area crouched in between drinking businessmen and their companions. I try in English to order a beer, but then a voice from behind intercepts and a hand falls on my shoulder. A young man with blonde dreadlocks and a nose ring is smiling at me. He says something to the bartender in Norwegian. The bartender understands him and gets me a beer.
“You were doing well,” he says. “Most people here understand English, but it’s not often that you actually hear it spoken.”
The young man is Chris. He tells me that he’s originally from Detroit but has been living outside of Trondheim for a few years managing a Norwegian rock band. Chris’ eyes are much older than the rest of his face, with streaks of fiery amber piercing through a calm and icy hue. Chris is beautiful, but I feel uncomfortable about the way he looks at me. As I speak, he smiles as if he knew of me already and was now merely confirming his suspicions. He turns around and makes a comment to the elderly lady sitting beside us at the bar. I can tell that he loves to demonstrate his mastery of the Norwegian tongue. She grunts and returns to her reading and Chris laughs like they’d had a pleasant conversation.
“I told her you were from America,” he says.
“But, I’m not,” I say.
“I know,” he grins and looking pleased with himself he proceeds to pour his beer. “You are never scared traveling all the way up here alone?” At this moment I cannot say that I am fearful. “I think you should be scared,” he continues. “You brave girl. You should probably be even be scared of me.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because of, I don’t know. That’s just the way it goes. Let’s go check out the smoking car. I’m dying for a cigarette.”
An hour later, at three o’clock a.m., the west is still aglow with sunset. I peek out between the curtains of the smoking car window as Chris lights up a match.
“I’m on my way up to visit my uncle,” he says. “He’s a musician.”
“Yeah?”
“You should come with me, you said that you play music. I think you’d love it. Him and my aunt sit up in their cabin in the mountains and play and play and play.”
“Norwegian folk?” I am making a joke to myself in my head.
“No, mostly bluegrass. My uncle’s the northern banjo king. Sometimes I think he’s the God of all things wild.”
“Sounds tempting.”
“A lot of people think that he’s a Satanist. But he’s really just a nice guy. I really think you should. I’d love to spend the time with you.” He leans over, close to me and reaches up to touch my hair. I can feel it in the soles of my feet. His eyes shift upward, I realize that I still do not quite trust him.
Trondheim
I wake in the morning light of the smoking car to a Trondheim station call and look around to find Chris gone. We had fallen asleep with our cigarettes burning as the horizon filled itself with violet at four a.m. I see him waiting for me as I descend from the train onto a small concrete platform. He has one small bag strapped over the shoulder of his leather jacket and a black guitar case in his hand. He looks up at me, smiles and proposes, “Breakfast?” I’m not sure. “Come on, what else do you have to do in Trondheim today?” I can’t understand my persistent hesitation to spend time with him. It’s true, I have nothing to do in Trondheim until my connecting train leaves at six that evening to take me up past the Polarsirklen. So I concede, and half asleep we put our luggage in the lockers and leave in search of breakfast.
As we walk through the empty morning streets I feel as if the town is whispering about me. Chris is leading me through a labyrinth of alleyways to empty and closed restaurants. I find myself thinking paranoid thoughts of him trying to get me into dark corners alone and I laugh at myself for being so ridiculous. Chris is always smoking, and I am feeling hungry, nauseous and distant. He is talking about Satan again and I realize that this has been a theme of our night.
“Thirteen churches,” he says. “The Satanists have burned down thirteen Norwegian churches in the past two months, and these buildings were like, totally old!” He laughs and muses to himself. “And they think they’re doing it to please ‘Satan’ or something. And they actually think he’d care!” We walk into the cobblestone town square. “You know, in ancient Norse paganism there was no real concept of Satan. There was but the Prince of the Power of the Air hanging from the sacred horse gallows. And then storm clouds breathe form to the sound of his horn- Oh damn!” he exclaims, looking around the square. “Everything is closed! I don’t understand,”
“It’s not even seven o’clock yet,” I suggest.
“I suppose you’re right.”
In the middle of the square a statue of King Olaf II rises above the shingled roofs of the old town. The sign names him as the founder of Trondheim in AD 997, and says that he is now recognized as the patron saint of Norway.
“A couple years ago we used to climb up there and put things on his head.” Looking up at its massive size this feat seems but impossible.
“How did you get up there?” I ask.
“Demon magic,” he says, picks up rock and boyishly throws it up at King Olaf’s face. “Patron saint my ass!” Chris’ face then illuminates, “ Now I know where we need to go,” he says, raises his eyebrows and grins at me.
Chris is leading me through maze of old stone houses in search of what he calls the “most beautiful place in the world.” We pass buildings I am certain we have passed before and cross streets with names I know we have already seen. Chris insists that we are going the right way and that “It will be worth it when we get there.” He is being secretive and I am feeling nervous.
“I don’t understand where we’re going,” I tell him. My now confused sense of direction suggests that we had been going around in circles and I struggle to remember which way it is back to the station.
“I just want to take you somewhere,” he says. “Trust me.” I am apprehensive and I notice his hand clutching something inside his jacket. I am wondering how I will escape.
“What are you holding in your jacket?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.
“What do you mean nothing?”
“You are so trusting, coming all this way in a strange city with strange me. For all you know I could be planning on killing you or raping you or maybe even possessing you… that might be even better.” He stops walking, looks me intensely in the eyes, and pulls his hand out slowly from under his jacket. “It’s my day book.” He starts laughing displaying the leather bound book. “I’m afraid to lose it.”
I’ve had enough, and turn around in the street. “ I just want to go back to the station and get some food- can we do that?”
Chris laughs, “Sure, we can do that later. But right now I have other plans for us.”
The Nidaros Domkirke is the cathedral said to have been built over the tomb of King Olaf II in recognition for his bringing Christianity to Norway. Its form is massive and it rises high before us through the old trees of a neighboring cemetery. We have finally arrived and the morning will soon be pushing noon.
“My God. Just look at it!” Chris exclaims as we approach. “Meter-thick walls of impenetrable stone! No feeble Satanist is gonna burn that baby down.” The doors are unlocked and we enter into the coolness of the cathedral’s shadowed silence. Above the entranceway a giant rose window blooms crimson reds and royal blues in the late morning light. “These have been said to be the finest rose windows in all of Europe. But not very many people know about them. Aren’t they fantastic?” He smiles and pirouettes into the centre of the aisle.
“Shhh,” he instructs and places a finger on my lips. “No talking. Just listen.” He cups his ear with his hand. “Do you hear the angels?” He looks at me long in the eyes. “I know that you can. Goddamn! This is the most beautiful place in the world.” His voice softens. “And you are beautiful. So much so that I- ”
“You what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever the fuck. I’m getting pathetic. I’ll meet you outside. I just want to go around back for a minute and look for something.”As he leaves me there, in the cool air between stone and stone, I feel strangely lost. The colours of the windows are even brighter now, and they swirl in spirals, dousing the gray floor with blood red light. Behind the altar an illuminated triptych depicts the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. A great snake rises below a sky of angels, and Satan is holding out the kingdom of the earth in one hand. His horns quest up for the firmament and a bull ring pierces his nose. Within the kingdom of the earth is all that is beautiful and desirable, but Jesus is turning his head away and looking at the heavens.
Much of the tempura is cracking from its age, but the background I can still make out the shadowy hanging figure of the Prince of Air. Around him blows the wind that could breathe both life and death into the world. And beside him is the burning bush that rises like a cathedral into the clouds. As I leave, I laugh and think of him saying that its walls should have been made with meter-thick, impenetrable stone. Outside the cathedral there is but the rumble of Trondheim traffic and a labyrinth of streets and stone that will lead me back to the station.
Las Lunas, New Mexico
At night-time you can hear the dog choir singing in the desert. They sing as they do every night, with their orchestra of cicadas and the accompaniment of train wails. They sing until the pink light of dawn caresses the rounded bodies of the hills preparing them for the unbelievable heat of day. It is here, in the desert, that I learned that I am made of water. I have also learned that in the red fiery land of south-central New Mexico it is water who is the exile.
I have been living in the free-standing garage of an old mud brick adobe cuartita that long ago crumbled and has since been neglected. This house had once belonged to Jorge and Maria Sanchez and their children when they were with them. Now they live in the tin trailer that has been erected next to the old skeletal foundation of mud brick, wood, and sand. Their children are long gone, but they have been given Christina. Christina once told me that she had been sent to her grandparents eight years ago after her mother threw her against the wall when she was five. But, Christina has told me a lot of things.
“We are all going to go to hell, you know,” she had said. Maria had told her not to speak to anyone who was on the devil’s side and she was trying to figure me out. “My grandma said that Bernie’s wife might go there first, if she doesn’t stop with the bingo and makin’ off with Bernie’s things.” Bernie is Christina’s uncle and he lives in a trailer on the other side of the road and keeps mostly to himself. His wife Helen has left him or been kicked out but he hasn’t spoken a word since it happened weeks ago. She broke in one night when Bernie was at the bar in town and dragged everything in the trailer out onto the lawn. Bernie came home to find the TV in the empty garden and the microwave planted in front of the wheels of the tractor. When he got up in the morning to go out into the fields he ran it over. Maria said that Bernie was never really one for cooking anyway.
A new season is starting to bloom through the suffocating heat of summer giving hopes of a lush harvest and the cooling down of the land. Ripened red chilis hang in bunches from wooden roadside stands, and wild squash swells in autumnal shades along side the irrigation ditches. But, even for the desert this summer has been unusually dry. The ditches are slowly drying down to reveal their muddy bottoms lined with old appliances dumped by careless locals. The heat persists, the daytime skies are a gorgeous impenetrable blue and Bernie prays out loud every night for the rain. “My grandma says that we’re all gonna go crazy if the rain don’t come soon,” Christina had told me. “She says that Bernie will have no crops and we will have no money. I don’t want to go crazy. My grandpa says I’m crazy enough already.” She laughs and looks up at the sky.
It is in the evenings that Christina and I go for our walks. I like to pass through the blossoming wild sunflowers and morning glory and she likes to tell me, in detail, about her day.
“My teacher says I got an attitude problem,” she says.
“Well do you?” I ask.
“My grandpa says I do. He says I’m mean. But I know it’s because I got mixed blood. I got white blood, and Mexican blood and Indian blood. I think that’s why I’m so mean.”
“I don’t think you’re mean.” I say. Though I know that often she likes to pretend that this is so.
It might have been the hill that first drew me to Los Lunas. The hill that rises so sharply above the town, like a dagger in a flattened chest, or a nipple breast-feeding the air. You can see it for at least ten miles in all directions, its apex topped with a simple white wooden cross. I think the hill deserves a better shrine than this and I imagine the elaborate monument I would create if ever I were to climb up to its peak. I envisage an ornate mosaic garden of curling vines and swelling blossoms that I would dedicate to the ephemeral beauty of the goddess.
In the hot late afternoon Maria and Jorge are sitting outside on their front steps swatting flies. I wonder about the futility of this exercise and ask about it. “One less,” Maria says referring to the flies, and turns around to pick up the dog that had been nuzzling her arm for attention. She sets him down on her lap.
“What do you know about the hill?” I ask. “Does it have a name?”
Maria looks up at me, “No,” she says. “It’s just called the Hill, I guess.”
“Do you ever go up there?”
“Sometimes we go, but usually just once a year. We walk and it takes a while but we go up to the top. The whole town goes on Good Friday. They go right up there and pray to the cross.” She pauses and looks up at the cloudless blue. “Christina should be home from school soon. It’s getting late.”
That night Christina seemed sad and spoke little. I tell her I think I will be leaving soon. “You can’t leave yet,” she says. “You have to wait for the birds. My family will worry that if you leave before they come it’s a bad omen. They are scared about the rain.” I ask what she means about the birds. “The sandcranes,” she says. “Hundreds of them come every year just before the harvest and land in my uncle’s chili field. It used to be my grandpa’s chili field but now he thinks he’s too old to work. My grandma just thinks he’s afraid that the devil is in the field, making the hot chili peppers burn. The sandcranes like the chilis, but they’re so loud.” She is rolling her eyes. “You can hardly sleep in the morning.”
The blueness of the desert sky is fading into orange and I wonder what it would taste like if I could get high enough to reach it with my tongue. I could reach it from the hill. It would help me taste the sky. When we get back to the trailer Bernie is there with Maria and Jorge waiting for us to return. His eyes speak words so weary he needn’t make a sound. Maria says, “Bernie needs your help Christina. We all do.” “What she done this time Bernie?” Christina giggles. “Lose it all on bingo again?” Bernie looks up at her and speaks the first words I have yet heard him say, “It’s not Helen, Christina. I need you to help me with the field.”
There is an old story that the locals tell about a woman who had ten children that she loved dearly. They were all beautiful, they say, but none so much as the eldest daughter. She was so beautiful, indeed that even the devil himself could not resist her and fell in love with her at first sight. The woman’s husband was a farmer and he worked the fields hard every day, bringing in the water for irrigation and giving to his crops his very own breath. But it is said that through the summer the ditches all dried up under the hottest sun they had ever known. It is said that this year the desert was like hell itself.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me,” Christina says. She is looking nervous. “It may be your story to tell someday,” Maria says. “If you will let it be.”
Every day the children helped their father bring in water from the fading river, but it did no good. “If it doesn’t rain,” the father said, “we will be harvesting nothing but the sand.” That night the devil came to the mother in sleep and offered her a deal. He would like the eldest daughter for his own, so he could reap her beauty and touch her silken brown skin. The mother, full of love for her child, refused. “Just one night then,” he said. “If you send her out into the field to be with me for one night, I promise I will make it rain.” The mother answered him with conviction, “I do not want to eat so much that I would let her go to you.” It is said now that there was no containing his fire. “Your foolishness has cost you woman,” he proclaimed. “For you shall no longer have her either.” With a passionate anger that shook the desert floor for miles he then turned every one of the woman’s children into small white birds. “They will come to you now only at harvest every year to remind you of the bounty you might have all shared.” The woman slowly died of grief, and it is said that she can still be heard wading through the muddy waters of the ditches, wailing in mournful memory for the loss of the children she so dearly loved.
I look down at my hands and see that they are made of water. I want to cry that if their devil needs me he could take me because I was wet enough to temper the fires of any hell. But it wasn’t me he desired.The next night, Christina comes to my door wrapped in a woollen blanket. “They want to let the devil have me,” she says. “Bernie just wants the money, and they are all afraid of what another bad thing will do to him. They are afraid that without the chilis he will disappear into himself. My grandpa says it’s the right thing to do. I think they don’t realise that I might disappear too. There is a big hole inside of me where I can go to hide.” I watch her walk from my door down the driveway and out into the road, her figure illuminated by the moon and framed by the outline of the darkened hill. I see her head, crowned by the silhouette of the cross I dreamed of replacing with an ornate garden shrine to the goddess. I know now that this garden would never grow on the top of a dusty hill in the middle of the desert.
I awake in the morning to the echoing of voices and know that today I will leave. I pack up my disorganised belongings into a few bags, tie them together and balance them on my back. It would only take an hour to walk out to the highway. As I walk I try to ignore Maria’s shrieks as she paces through the chili field and I try to forget the sound of Jorge’s voice as he hollers out that “It isn’t funny anymore” and that she can stop hiding. I don’t look at Bernie’s face as he sits on the steps of his trailer, silent as I know he will be for some time. I just pass by, my back feeling heavy on my way to say my good-byes to the hill. I have to leave my bag at the bottom for the slope is steep and the dry ground would easily slide down beneath my weight. As I climb, my legs scrape against dry sagebrush and eventually they draw blood but I won’t stop until I reach the white wooden cross at the top of the peak. This is now the only place from which the desert still seems truly silent. The sky is no longer a uniform blue as I can see dark clouds approaching from the horizon. When I finally reach the peak, I shut my eyes to the colours and the heat and try to listen to the sounds of my new world. Soon, I feel the wetness on my skin. I open my mouth and reach out my tongue to try and taste the drops. Opening my eyes I catch the shadow of a figure swooping down above and around me, circling the circumference of the hill. I close my eyes again to the sound of one sandcrane timidly finding its voice and way through the cooling desert sky.
Paris
The afternoon air is thick with heat and sun and I have sought out shade in the oasis of a small left bank park.I am sure the trees of Paris were once all snakes, for they shed their skin out of habit and are known sometimes to bite. I am walking through La Place de St-Germain de Pres collecting strips of fallen bark from the trees that line the crowded walkway. I have decided that it is the Parisian air that causes this phenomenon, stripping the protective layer, leaving each tree bare and vulnerable against the blur of a hurried metropolis. To me the trees are like all others who have journeyed here to recreate themselves in an artist’s skin. They are left standing, peeled and naked in the melange of a downtown hubbub watching lovers kissing and pigeons eating bread. The thick air of this city does make me want to write and I sit down on a bench with the pile of bark I have collected from the ground. With black ink, I write words on their underside:
I am bark, Paris art, dying in the sick air.
I am feeling melodramatic.
A man approaches me from the side, black teeth showing through his quickly moving lips. I do not feel much like a conversation and pretend not to understand his French. “That is very beautiful what you are doing,” he says in English and sits down beside me on the bench. “You have come to Paris to be a writer?” “No,” I say. “I have just come to Paris.” He fumbles through his bag and pulls out a red thermos. “I think you should have some juice,” he declares and pours a cup. “I don’t want any, thank you.” He looks surprised. “So you come to Paris to be a writer and you will not share a drink with a man?” I nod. “Well, you know why the trees are losing their skin then?” I ask him why. “Because we are all killing ourselves by breathing the air polluted with dead artist souls. If you stay here long enough you will begin to look like that.” He points a finger at the trees. “All white and smooth with no clothes on. And all the men will try to write on you with their pens of thick black ink.” He gets up, walks over to the closest tree and rubbing one hand up and down the trunk he mutters to himself, “And they will touch you …and-” With an exclamation of pain he jumps back, walks over to me and displays his slivered palm. “And sometimes,” he says, “you will be mean.”
Omaha, Nebraska
En route to Colorado I stop for some caffeine.
I could not pass by Omaha without drinking lukewarm coffee and smoking cigarettes in the diesel diner by the I-80 mouth. Here, I sit and meditate on the overheard musings of angry old men. They sit at a large round table drinking from chipped mugs and eating cherry pie. There are four of them, and the waitress knows their names. In my head I try to figure out the stories of their lives. As a means of reference I begin to give them numbers. Number one has been a cattle farmer his entire life. Number two always seems to be wearing that same gray wool hat. Number three has a daughter and two grandkids in Minnesota. He only calls her twice a year. They do not acknowledge me in words, but their glances tell a tale. They are angry with me because my legs are hairy, and I am smiling. I continue to sit quietly and listen to them talk, picking slowly at my plate of fries. Now they are going around the circle saying why or if or when or how they would beat or hit a woman. Number one says that there ain’t no point in fist fightin’ with a woman. “You know why?” Someone asks why. “Cause if you win you can’t tell nobody, and if she wins, you don’t want no one to know about it.” The rest laugh accordingly.
“I don’t think I’d ever it a woman,” number two says. “But I know a witch I’d like to smack. She’s got a broomstick on her door, and dresses like a slut.”
“What do you know about witches?” number three asks. “ I’ll bet you don’t know nothing.”
“Well I do know that witchcraft started probably a thousand years ago when nobody understood how things worked.” Number two’s comment seems to go over. He continues, “You gotta know, I’ve seen this witch and I can tell. I took Jerry over the other day to show him the broomstick. And so we get over there and Jerry starts to act all funny and like he’s scared or something. And I tell him, Jerry come on we gotta go steal the broomstick off the door and see what happens. And Jerry’s looking all pale like he’s gonna fall face down on her front steps or something. And I tell him ‘I’ll get it then’ and he’s just standin’ there like he’s frozen.”
Number four takes a slow drag of his cigarette, “And so?”
“And so I get the damn broom and now Jerry thinks these crows are after him.”
Number three is skeptical, “Crows?”
“Yeah. Crows, for Christ’s sake. He thinks these goddamn crows are all chasin’ him around the city, peckin’ at his head.”
Number four laughs, “The old goof.”
Number two sighs and lights his cigarette. “That evil bitch. I’d smack her if I could.”
The waitress comes by and jokes with them, “So I see you fellas are home for the night.” She wants to know if they would like anything else before she goes home.
“I’ll have some more pie, Gloria,” number four says. “You know it’s like I’ve died and my tongue has gone to heaven.” She smiles and gives a little laugh.
Number three eases himself up from the chair and rubs his thin white hair. “I’ll see you fellas tomorrow.” He turns to walk towards the door. None of the men look up to see him leave.
“So you really think she’s a witch then?” asks number one. “Son of a goddamn bitch. I didn’t think they existed anymore.”
Number three laughs even before he begins to speak. “What are ya talkin’ about? We all got one waitin’ for us at home.” Chuckling, he looks around the restaurant sheepishly as if to see if anyone else had heard.
A short while later the conversation slows and the men acknowledge their mutual weariness and desire to return home. The waitress comes over to clean the table.
“See you fellas tomorrow,” she says.
“Yup,” number one.
“Uh-huh,” number two adds.
And they are gone.
I finish my coffee, pay my bill and head outside, once again to meet the highway. The skyline of Omaha sinks down beneath a sky of stars and a crescent of light is rising up slowly between downtown’s towering spires. Here, in the flattened prairies of the mid-west even the moon, slightly red, struggles to be female.
Dun Fionnachaid, County Donegal, Ireland
On the north coast of Ireland, Sheephaven Bay dips down like a cradle of soft golden sand. I have travelled here to find Mor Strand; a place that I was told gives sight to the world that lies between the sea and the land. Here, in the still and early light of morning the air is thick with voices.
Just outside the Corcreggan Mill is a field of yellow wildflowers. Through and around the golden blossoms weaves a northern wind laced with drops of water. I walk slowly on softened ground that sinks beneath my heels towards the row of trees that I was told would lead me to the Strand. Beyond the trees are mountains of sand, rising high above the soft meadows. Around these dunes, tall green grasses have been braided by the breeze. I find my way to a subtle path that winds between the sand swells and walk north to a horizon made of sky. There is nothing but the sound of moistened earth as it clings to my soles and then releases me to find another step. Brendan had said that I would walk at least an hour on this path before I found the sloping sand cliff that would bring me to the beach.
I had met Brendan outside of the pub in town. He was waiting for the fishmonger. I was wrapped in a yellow rain jacket, sitting by the side of the road with my pack, wondering if I would find a warm, dry place to sleep. I had just hitchhiked up from Letterkenny after spending most of the night sleeping in the bus depot. Outside, the watery wind had screamed through the narrow streets like it was sounding the wind harps of war.
“You’ve seen the fish man?” Brendan asked.
“Sorry, I don’t think so.” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
“Have you seen a bloke about fifty with a truck fulla ice and fish?”
I shook my head.
“You’re lookin’ quite wet there. And you’re from America, I can tell.”
“Canada actually.”
“Right, right. Well if need be, you can come with me and sleep at the mill tonight. We’re housin’ some other folks as well. They just come over from Derry. They’re all getting out of there y’know. My wife Shannon’s settin’ up the loft with beds. You’re welcome to drive out with me, and load your pack up in the back of the truck- that is if you don’t mind waitin’ for me to get me some fish.” I told him that I would be so incredibly grateful for a place to sleep. The past twenty-four hours had been long and wet and tiring.
Brendan is a man about forty, with flaming red curly hair. As he speaks with me he leans himself up against his rusting black truck, and with one hand he rubs it with tenderness I would reserve only for skin.
“So I wonder where that fish man’s gone.” He looks down to check his watch. “He usually shows to sell his fresh catch every Thursday at three. I can’t remember him ever not comin’!”
Then, the door to the pub swings opens and a young woman comes out, sliding on a black raincoat. Her blonde hair is tied up in a flowered scarf.
“Oh, whatcha’ doin, there Brendan?” she asks, and looks up at the sky. “Looks like the rain is finally clearin’, maybe. You think?”
“Well it looks much better than it was lookin’ last night, that I know.” He turns then to me. “You weren’t out travelling in that storm last night, were you?”
“Not quite,” I say. “I was on a bus, coming in from Belfast.”
“Oh dear,” the woman says. “So you made it through that ok? You must have just got across before they blocked off that crossing at Derry. They torched one of those buses just last night, I heard, you know? Did you hear that Brendan? All them folks runnin’ around the streets like a bunch of crazy people. Say, it’s lucky that storm came in. Served to put all the fires out.”
“Have you not seen the fish man today?” Brendan asked.
The woman’s eyes grow deep and heavy. “Oh, Brendan. You haven’t talked to no one yet, since the storm, I guess. Maggie at the grocery says some boats gone missin’. She heard that there’s a few that never came in after the high winds hit. She said the waves might as well have opened up a great mouth with teeth to swallow… well… they’ve not found any traces yet.”
“Right, right,” Brendan said, covering his eyes with his hands. “It’s happening again.”Before I got on the boat to Belfast I had no idea that there was trouble there. “The worst uprising in twenty-five years,” the newspaper on the ship had said. “Mobs force families to flee,” “Troops pour in as North goes on red alert,” Crowds of teenagers danced around the hijacked bus as thick smoke belched out of the engine. All major highways blocked. Train tracks barricaded.
“There are no trains or buses leaving the North tonight,” the ticket woman at the station had said. “Just don’t go out into the streets after six. That’s when the riots start.” And so I began to watch from the station windows, as the streets were set aflame to the music of sirens howling at the fiery sky.
Later in the evening I learned that there was one bus going to Derry, and I figured that from there I could just hitch across the border if necessary. The bus was unbearably crowded, with people packed in tight, some standing in the aisles. Entire families, many with young kids were questing to flee the country. Perhaps they were going to family or friends in the Republic, or perhaps they were not. Soon, the rain began to pour and covered the windows like thick sheets of ice, obscuring all sight.I feel that great tension builds in a land free of thunder and lighting. I have often wondered what subtleties might occur in regions prey to this phenomenon. As passionate as it might storm, there is something about the electrical eclipse of light and sound that drives all tension through the flesh to bury it deep inside the ground.
“Now that you mention it, I don’t ever remember us getting’ any of that up here,” Brendan had said. “The sea and land, you see, they meet and where they touch- it’s like a canyon. It will swallow sound and light and life- to be never seen again. Aye, you’re right. With those bombs that blaze up into the night, they’re just tryin’ to put some fire back up into the sky.”
Between light and sound, and land and sea, and earth and sky we turn, brewing slowly in the cauldron of the ever neighboring worlds.Looking behind me now, I can see but hills of sand and a long pathway lined with tiny purple wildflowers. Above me, the clouds have begun to scatter into a patchwork quilt of white and blue that my tired legs long to rest upon. As I climb the final hill, the Strand unfolds before me. Before me, a long beach of silver velvet curves like the most beautiful of bodies. It is entirely empty, except for a wooden fishing boat that lies flipped over at the waterline. You can hear the sound of gentle waves rushing smoothly over its underside. I slide down the steep sand cliff and make my way over to the boat. As I approach, I take off my shoes and bury my feet deep down into the ground. The sun has finally found a window in the sky, and it shines down on my face with the weight of autumn, falling heavy on the land. I can remember secrets from when I was a seal. And in the cradle that rocks between sea and shore, you can spin the light to gold.
